


Breaking Windows

by StAnni



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Future Fic, Infidelity, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: It mattered more when she was nineteen.  It felt unfair then.  When she was younger she wasn’t as good as bracing herself for impact.  With Bruce she’s had to hone it to a skill.  A decade has taught her that there is no such thing as fair and unfair, just like there is no such thing as getting upset over crap that will always stay the same.   Bruce will always have more and she will always have less, of everything.Just like Bruce will always leave, without a doubt, whenever he feels like it.
Relationships: Rachel Dawes/Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne
Kudos: 26





	Breaking Windows

*  
On the way up in the elevator she notices his gaze, vacant and bone tired, staring at nothing. 

He doesn’t say anything when the doors to his penthouse slide silently open but when they step inside he dips his head, leans his forehead her temple, his strong fingers curling around her shoulders. The gesture is so intimate, so imbued with the weight of their history that her heart constricts despite the forewarnings that has started to build up like plaque in her veins. 

“You should get some rest.” She says, breathing in the feint scent of grease, blood and sweat. 

He doesn’t answer her, not at first – his eyes are closed, a slight frown there – he is soaking up the quiet. And then he does speak, eyes still closed, and voice slightly hoarse “I should.” 

She wakes up next to where he was sleeping four hours later. He’s gone, his shoes are gone, his clothes that was strewn all over the white marble floors hours ago – gone. It’s not a new thing. She calls for him, just once –fairly certain that he’s left completely – and she is greeted by only silence in answer. 

The tiles are cold as she picks up her shoes in the dim morning light. There are patches of dust under the sideboard tables. Alfred’s absence from the apartment is apparent in most things but none so much as the fact that the cleaning staff clearly avoids staying for too long when he is not around. 

Almost nothing in the minimalistic white expanse would give you any idea of the man that lives inside. It is beyond strange every single time she is in here. 

She’s asked him before why he doesn’t have his parent’s furniture, some of the pieces that survived the fire, brought to the apartment. He defers back to Alfred whenever he can, “I’ll ask Alfred when he gets back” or “Alfred was going to do it.” 

She actually thinks that he prefers existing in the modern approximation of a desolate cave.

Bruce lives his life in neat compartments. She has never minded it, she prefers it in fact. She likes that she can seclude herself to certain aspects of his life – that she can avoid the parts where she doesn’t fit in, the parts that are tedious or too inundated with Gotham politics that it makes her sick. She likes the fact that he can feel that he can have a whole life, and her in it, without having her in his whole life. She is fine with it, and in fact, she wouldn't have it another way. 

But she knows that it isn’t a two way thing. She knows that he knows that there is no part of her life that she has separate to his. She doesn’t have an office door that she can close, or a business meeting in Sweden. She has him, the street at night, the empty room she lays her head when it is not next to him on one of his pillows.

It mattered more when she was nineteen. It felt unfair then. When she was younger she wasn’t as good as bracing herself for impact. With Bruce she’s had to hone it to a skill. A decade has taught her that there is no such thing as fair and unfair, just like there is no such thing as getting upset over crap that will always stay the same. Bruce will always have more and she will always have less, of everything. 

Just like Bruce will always leave, without a doubt, whenever he feels like it.

Before she opens the front door she pulls a jacket from the rack at the door – assuming it is one of Bruce’s – she hadn’t brought one the night before and a grimy chill has now set in the streets outside. Pulling the jacket off the peg she catches a scent so distinct that her heart stutters. The feint sweep of vanilla and wild fig is so unexpected that it seems suffocating even though she is sure anyone else would not have been able to discern it. As a burglar you learn to pick up on the most muted signals, smells and sounds.

She doesn’t wear perfume – not usually, it doesn’t really go with her choice of profession - also the reason why she doesn’t usually smoke, even though she loves to.

Bruce’s jacket, to her, is practically drenched and she pushes it back on the pin immediately.

The shock is not that Bruce’s jacket smells of perfume. She has no misapprehensions about his eligibility as one of the handsome young movers and shakers of Gotham. The shock is that she recognizes it.

*

Selina sits at the bar, her hair loose down her back of her black dress – waves of gold. He can feel the silkiness of those strands between his fingers.

When he moves to the vacant seat next to hers, the green of her eyes steel slightly and she glances away from him as she sips her drink. 

“Mad?” He asks lightly and she doesn’t look at him when she answers “What would be the point?” 

The barman slides him a crystal tumbler of neat whiskey and he can see the irritation in her shoulders. “This is your place now too?” She asks, looking at him this time and he gives a small smile, a peace offering “You know me, not one for waiting in line.” Though it’s only half true and her eyes are fast, sharp “Alfred should have taught you patience.” And he tags back, not missing a beat “Speaking of which, where did you go?” His feign innocence is not as charming as he hopes and she gives a bitter shake of her head before she takes a last sip from her drink. “Away.” She gets up, the material of her dress whispering as she moves. “Same place I’m going now.” 

He watches her as she puts a bill on the counter and lets his eyes linger on the diamond bracelet around her wrist. She notices and it is as if he can feel the air change. Expectantly she waits for him to call her out.  
It’s not as if it is new – he’s well aware of how she makes a living, or takes a living. “So you’re taking the night off?” He asks, lightly again, and she answers crisply “Depends.” She really is mad. “Any bar in Gotham that you don’t own?” 

He wants her to stay, he wants to make up. Moreso even, he doesn’t want her to “work” tonight.

“One hour.” He offers, and then, when she doesn’t move “I apologise, I shouldn’t have left.” 

She puts her purse on the glass of the bar, and he’s halfway there. “I hate that apartment.” She says, as if she hasn’t said it before a few dozen times. “Take it up with Alfred when he one day decides to come back from his extended vacation.” He counters with a forced smile that she doesn’t return. “I don’t like it that much either.” 

She doesn’t sit but the tilt of her head, the lean of her pale wrist against the bar makes him hopeful that she at least will stay, at least for a little while longer. “I only see you when you’re…” He can see her searching for a word, a euphemism “…desperate.” And for a euphemism it packs a punch. He counters, immediately “That’s not true.” But it is. “When you’re too fucked up for anyone else to see.” She elaborates, deadly honest. That’s the thing about Selina, she’s never been afraid to hold up a mirror – not that it alleviates the bite.

“And you’re so different?”

She blinks, considering his insult. As much as he knows that he didn’t come to the bar for an argument – he can feel the tension in his shoulders building. 

“Difference is that I’m always this fucked up. You have no illusions about that.”

And then she does step closer, picking up her purse again, and he picks up on a scent – a perfume, highly out of place for Selina, as it wafts from her hair. It is almost as unsettling as her words.

“I’m not two people.”

She’s not wrong but she’s not right either. His hand closes around her wrist, over the bracelet, quietly - holding her there but not with any violence or enough of a show to attract any attention other than hers. “So I see you when I need you. I admit it. It doesn’t change the fact that I do need you.” 

It is not a tact that he usually takes with her – brutal honesty. Usually it is easier to skirt along the sides of their new relationship, to remind her about the stones beneath the surface – their history before he left. Usually that’s enough.

“And who gets you after you’ve had your wallow, Bruce? After you’ve taken what you need to get back up.” She doesn’t press against him or make a move to back away. She meets him there, in the moment, ready for a fight. This must have been on her mind for some time. And he doesn’t have it in him to answer.

“So I break a few windows and steal a few trinkets.” She shrugs and the diamonds pressing against his palm feels cold. “I don’t call up an ex for an emotional patch up before I step out into the bright light of day again.”

“Ex?” The chill of the word spiders out through his heart.

“Seriously?” She retorts and the bitter amusement in her gaze is enough for him to let go of her wrist – to feel the indents of the line of diamonds like little teeth in the soft part under his thumb. When she takes her wrist away he can see the redness around it – he hadn’t realised he’d been pressing that hard.

“I don’t use you, Selina.” Because it doesn’t feel that way, not to him. He can count on one hand the times that he’s had something to talk about on a date with one of the faceless elites of Gotham. The closest he’d ever come to an actual connection had been with Rachel but Selina doesn’t know about that, there would be no way that she knows about that. Besides, Rachel doesn’t see him, all the sides to him, like Selina does. There is no comparison. Not when you take away the stuff that inevitably doesn’t matter, the wealth and the parties, the optics. He knows that. 

But of course he can’t explain it, because explaining it will definitely shake the already unsteady frame of whatever this is that they are finally building.

“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” He asks, his eyes not leaving hers – the need to fix it, to ensure that there is at least one thing, one thing that is still whole even when he is not, feels like an impossible wave breaking over him. He didn’t see this conversation plummeting this far down this fast.

“Like your apartment?” She bites back sweetly, silently furious – her knuckles white around her purse. 

They’re on a brink now and he knows that anything that he will say in frustration now will only push both of them over. So he doesn’t say anything. And the silence between them feels like a heavy weight on his heart. 

“Am I being unreasonable, Bruce?” She taunts, eyes cool – taking in his defeat.

“It’s not as if you lend yourself to more normalized circumstances, Selina.” He tries back, weary but not ready to give up.

Swift on the uptake she doesn’t allow for a breath and her open palm slaps on the bar top – old Selina, eyes flashing with satisfaction “Precisely! Exactly.” 

The to and fro feels slightly more familiar, safer, than the quiet waters of a dissolving relationship so he digs his heels in and doesn’t back down. “So what do you want? Movie nights and dates? You’re a criminal.” 

She doesn’t flinch because she’s not a slow healer, not like him. He’s still angry about the “ex” comment. She regards him evenly. 

“So what is it then,” She asks, her tone disarmingly quiet, like she is breathing out the words. “…that keeps you circling?” 

When they were children she’d throw herself in front of any bullet for him, no question and no regard. He’d have done the same for her. Would still.  
But he sees a different Selina now. He can see the way she takes him in, her gaze moving from his mouth to his eyes. She doesn’t’ trust him. Not anymore. He’s never been on the other side of her trust before. The realization is jarring and he realizes with a start that he’s been off, way off, for a long time. 

He tries again, and can’t stop the concern in his voice now “Selina, I’m not… I love you. I need you….”

She is unmoved, staring at him, waiting for his response.

“I don’t..."circle"you. I need you. I’m a selfish asshole, I know. But you know that too…” 

She takes a step back and crosses her arms. The bar has quietened down around them. He notices for a moment that they have been talking for longer than he realized. 

“You know me.” He finally tries and he does see softness then, some resignation. It might be the truest thing about him – and it might be that Selina does know him more than anyone else, more than Alfred, more than he knows himself even.

For a moment he wonders if she’s going to leave. But from the rise and fall of her chest, the way her eyes dip from his – fall to her hand, the bracelet. He can see that it’s not over, she’s not done. He has never seen it as acutely as this, her shattering in front of him, she is struggling, forcing herself to stay. 

Her voice is quiet – eyes still on the bracelet “This belongs to Rachel.” And then the shift in her eyes, the murky green as she corrects herself “Belonged, rather.” And then, as she looks directly at him “Came with perfume.”

The gauntlet is thrown and it all falls apart.

There is no point in asking her how she even knows about Rachel or trying to retrace his own steps, figure out where there was a crack in the compartments of his life.

“What did you do to her?”

She doesn’t react, at all, to the question – not to the clear and breathless shock in his tone, not to the way that he stands up, taking a step forward, his hand curling around the edge of the bar. But the vindication that hardens her resolve is palpable. 

They are, again, where they were a year ago – strangers as a result of his actions and in spite of their past. 

She moves her hand from the table, taking her purse and the line of her neck, pale and white, blurs as his mind races. Finally she turns around to him as she moves out from his towering form.

“I break windows, Bruce. I take trinkets. I don’t destroy people.” 

*

Rachel’s apartment is a little way downtown – it doesn’t fall into the graceless, icy barbicans that make up the Wayne Enterprises hold of Gotham, but it’s not exactly the Narrows either. 

The first time that she met Rachel, it was just outside of Bruce's building - she'd walked smack into Selina - too focused on her phone to even give a proper shrug of an apology. Back then Selina had only seen her in a whiff of perfume and sleek brown hair. A rich girl, too rude to care who she stepped over. 

It had been a bit of a shock when Selina found out that Rachel was actually not a resident of Bruce's castle.

Things are scattered about, coffee mugs on a kitchen countertop. Some magazines, letters, what can only be the yellow manila folders of a legal cases, a couple of pens, half a candy-bar folded neatly close. 

Selina is surprised, and a little betrayed, to learn that Rachel is somehow related whether by blood or some other familiarity, to Alfred. An old picture in a ridiculous sea-shell frame shows a bright, smiling brunette – possibly around eighteen – in the midst of a gaggle of friendly adult faces, one of them bearing the very rare sight of Alfred Pennyworth’s smile. 

She can feel the warmth emanating from the modest furnishings, a couch that looks soft enough to fall asleep on, polaroids stuck to the refrigerator with various colourful magnets, a box of flavoured teas half-open next to a purple kettle. She feels cold, from the inside out, staring at the mild haze of mundane possessions.

Even when Selina does have money to spare she’d never think of buying a couch, or a fridge, let alone a magnet to stick things to it. And even the most outrageous caricature of herself would not include carrying a grocery bag containing a magazine and a box of teas to a furnished apartment.

She does see Bruce though – as if he has left fingerprints behind. She sees his brand of whiskey among dusty bottles of wine. She sees his favourite book, dog-eared and open, on the arm of the soft couch.  
She finds his scarf in the back of a sock drawer, where she also finds a pair of his socks, not folded by him – tucked in between muted pinks, greys and whites.

The diamond bracelet is a certainly a surprise - now that Selina knows that Rachel is not wealthy by Gotham standards. She also knows that it couldn’t have come from Bruce. Bruce wouldn’t have the wiles to pick out a string that is both this delicate and grandiose. She is certain that it must have been a gift from Alfred and just the thought of feels like a heel to her throat. Sure, Alfred has never liked her – but it has always seemed as if he tolerated her, especially the past year, for Bruce’s sake.  
Clearly his tolerance of her is simply him biding his time – waiting for Bruce to finally break the last of his bad habits.

She’d like to see his face though, she’d like to wear the bracelet around Alfred just one time. But she has no idea when he will ever decide that he’s had enough of a vacation. 

And clearly her act is drawing to a close.  
*


End file.
